Measuring Social Return on Investment

Measuring Social Return on Investment

You now have a clear understanding of social media ROI and its importance for growing your business and social media presence. Next up is determining the right way to measure your goals so you can have a viable way of proving that your efforts are making an impact. In part two of our three-part Social Media Return on Investment series, the digital marketing aficionados at Zest provide some insightful tips on how you can measure and track your social media ROI to make sure you are well on your way to accomplishing your goals.

Create Clear and Specific Objectives

While defining the end-goal of your social media marketing strategy and outlining your key performance indicators (KPIs) is a great first step in the right direction, you need to have a plan in place to reach those goals. By creating clear objectives, you will be able to better align your social media initiatives with the goals of your company. Example objectives could include enhanced brand awareness, better customer experience, increased customer acquisition and much more. Choose a clear objective and KPI’s that can help you reach it. For example, if your objective is to increase brand awareness, then your social media KPI’s could be growing the shares, likes and comments on your pages.

Merely choosing an objective is not enough, you’ll also need to set a proper deadline and a specific business goal that you feel indicates that your strategy is working. For instance, don’t just say that your goal is to increase brand awareness and leave it at that! Instead, maybe you want to see a 15% increase in page likes by the end of the year. Maybe you want your follower count to grow from 500 followers to 700 followers in six months. Whatever your goal is, make sure it is specific and achievable within a designated time frame.

Define Your Metrics

In order to make sure you are staying on the right path to achieving your end-goal, you’ll need appropriate metrics to determine whether or not your strategy is working.

Back to the example of brand awareness as a social media objective—if you are looking to increase the number of eyes on your social media accounts, it is obvious that you want to take likes, shares, comments and followers into account. These metrics are clear indicators of an increased or decreased social media brand presence. However, you may also want to get into the specifics even more. Looking at additional metrics such as overall reach, conversions or even site traffic can help you further assess how well your social media pages are performing.

Useful tools like Google Analytics and Hootsuite are lifesavers for digital marketers because of their unique capabilities to track ROI and monitor the success of social media campaigns and initiatives. Don’t assume that just because you’re posting and interacting regularly on your social media accounts that you are on your way to achieving your social media marketing goals. Leveraging the benefits of ROI-tracking tools can give you a clear understanding of what is working and what needs to be adjusted in your strategy.

Be Aware of Your Spending

It may feel way too easy to boost social posts willy-nilly, spend a ton of time on content creation and pour money and resources into your campaign under the assumption that you’ll make it all back and more. Since we are the professionals, we urge you not to fall for this trap! Boosting relevant posts and spending time meticulously crafting content are wonderful and even necessary steps to reaching your social media marketing goals and gaining a positive social media ROI, but it’s important to be strategic and allocate a proper plan and budget for your initiatives. This way, you have a better chance of improving your social media ROI without finding yourself spending more money than you’re earning back.

Learn the Tricks of the Trade with the Digital Marketers at Zest

When it comes to measuring your social media return on investment, it is crucial to set clear objectives, know what metrics to track and make sure you are staying within the limits of your budget. Since there is a ton of strategy involved in these steps, it is essential to speak to a team of digital marketing pros who have seen it all before and know just what to do. Our zesty team is fluent in the ins-and-outs of social media marketing and can help you set a clear, reachable and refined strategy for measuring your social media ROI and determining what success means for you. To learn more about how the digital marketers at Zest can help you accurately measure your social media ROI, contact our Towson office today!